The seed for Turtle River Montessori School came from its founder's desire to have her own daughters involved in the Montessori experience. It began with five children, and today, there are 125 children in the school.

That is about to change, Bubli Dandiya, the school's founder says. On Oct. 16, Jupiter Town Council gave the school the go-ahead to build a new school on a piece of land next to Maplewood Park, and when completed, Dandiya will be able to have up to 250 students at the school.

"Before I came to Florida, I worked in a Montessori school," Dandiya explained. "When our first daughter, Pia, who is now a junior at Harvard University, was about 3, I wanted her to have the Montessori experience, where she would be respected, empowered and be responsible for herself."

In 1997, after the family had moved to North County, Dandiya and a small group of parents started home-schooling their children, using the Montessori methods. The following year, Turtle River Montessori was officially created.

"Jamie Stuve, the executive director of the Loxahatchee River Historical Society, was one of our teachers, and she suggested the name of the school, since our first location was near Limestone Creek Elementary School," Dandiya said. Both Pia and Dandiya's youngest daughter, Sonia, a freshman at Suncoast High School, graduated from the Turtle River school. Since then, the school has grown by word of mouth. "We went from five kids at the beginning to 19 children in 1995, and now we have 125 children ages 2 1/2 to 11 years old," she said. "We have nine teachers, nine full-time assistants plus the support staff. And we mandate that parents become involved and actively volunteer between 25-30 hours per family a year. We also have parent education one evening a month, so parents can understand the Montessori philosophy and reinforce it at home."

Part of the curriculum emphasizes learning about different cultures, and in October, the students had their "peace" festival, where each of the groups dressed up in the costumes of their selected cultures, and shared food and information about that country.

"We couldn't do this without the parents," Dandiya said. "That phrase, 'it takes a village to raise a child' is so true in this school, which is like a large family from our administrative director Lainey Azarian all the way through the teachers, assistants, staff and to the parents."

The school has taken this mission a step further by starting a foundation, "Empower a Child," to help children become educated, responsible and tolerant citizens of the world, Dandiya said. "We want to serve all the children in the community, not just those from Turtle River, through this foundation."

With the new building, Dandiya expects the word to spread even more about Turtle River Montessori, and she's particularly pleased that the new school is the first private school in Florida to be a certified green building. The new building is 22,000 square feet, much larger than the 6,000 square feet the school now occupies in Fisherman's Wharf.

"We will be capturing rainwater for irrigating our garden, we'll have solar panels that will be used for some of our exterior pumps, we're creating a science living lab outside, where we will use drought resistant plants, and we'll have functional transoms over the doors and a cupola in the hall that can pull warm air out and bring in cooler air," Dandiya said. "We plan on having 'fresh air days,' where we can open the windows and use these functional transoms.

"Going green isn't a luxury anymore, it is a necessity. If we want our children to be earth-friendly people, then we need to model this behavior for them and make them aware of the environment."

The new Turtle River Montessori School will break ground early in 2008.